Automate Your Workflow With Wappwolf

One of the things that is a catch twenty-two with me is the fact that I love to find shortcuts and an easier way to do something. Although it does come in handy, there are times, when it comes back to bite me. But, you have to admit, when it comes to your workflow, if there is a way to cut down on time, we are all for it. I know my time is precious, and I want to maximize it the best that I can.

That is why when an app like Wappwolf comes around, I get pretty excited. Wappwolf has a suite of apps that connect to certain cloud services where you can create automations to help with your workflow. I have been using it for the past week or so and I have definitely loved the different ways that I can use it to help me in my every day life.

Getting Started

First of all, Wappwolf can connect to both Google Docs and Dropbox right now. In the future they are planning on connecting to Sky Drive and Box.net. When you first start to use the web app, you have to connect to your Google Docs and/or your Dropbox account. What made this a little confusing is that you cannot connect to both services at the same time on one web page because they have different web address. If you want to connect to both you have to open one page and connect to one service and then open another page and connect to the other one there. Once you connect to both of them, you can start the automation process.

Log in screens for Google Docs and Dropbox

Creating Your Automations

This is where the fun and creativity truly begins. Depending on the service that you are using, after you log in, you will see the different folders you have in there. In order to get started, you are asked the question, “Everytime you put a file in…..which folder?”, where you then select the folder you want. Once you select a folder, you are then going to want to set an automation task. There are over 10 different automations, anything ranging from turning a document into a PDF to uploading it to Dropbox or other cloud services.

Choosing a folder

The automation can be as simple as you want it to be and it can also be as complicated as you want it to be. For example, I create contracts for my wife’s photography business in Google Docs, but I also need them to be turned into a PDF when I am done so I can email them off to the client. In order to do this, I select the folder in Google Docs where I usually put a contract. Then I select the automation that I want it to do, in this case I want it to turn into a PDF. Now, I am done and I can go and test it out to see if it works.

Choosing an Action

This is where creativity and a little patience can come in very handy. Since there are so many actions you can do in your process, you really can come up with some great automations. The nice thing is that automations can have more than one action. So, for example, I can put a picture into a Dropbox folder then it can automatically be cropped to a specific width and height, then a logo stamped on it, and finally be sent to Facebook to be posted.

Photo Actions

Could Be Better

Although I really like the service and how easy it is to make an automation, I really do not like the setup and organization of the app. Like I had mentioned earlier, Wappwolf has different url’s for Dropbox and Google Docs, so if I want to make an automation in Google Docs then switch over to Dropbox, I have to first log out of one and into the other every single time I want to do this. I wish there was a way where there was one universal web app where you can log into all of your cloud services once and not have to worry about it again.

The other thing that bugged me about this app is that the organization of the actions was a little confusing. For example, when I started to create an automation, above where I selected the folder that I wanted to use there is a slider that has all of the major actions and if you didn’t know it, you would think that these are the only actions to choose from. But, instead if you don’t select one of those actions and hit “Next”, you will see that there are a lot more than just the ones that were in the slider. There are actually over 30 actions to choose from, which is a big difference than the 10-12 that are in the slider. My thought would be to get rid of the slider all together and just make the user click the “Next” button and give them all of the actions there. Way less confusing this way, if you ask me.

Conclusion

Overall, I have to say that I really like the concept behind Wappwolf. I think they really have a solid web app here, for the most part. If they could somehow integrate all of the services into one web app, that would make the user experience a whole lot easier, in my opinion. Granted, I am not a web developer, so I have no idea if this is even possible or not.

But, overall, I like the service and the more that I use it the more ways I find to automate things down to 1 step that used to take me 3 or 4 to do. I would definitely say that if you are interested in cutting some time down on your work flow, go and check this app out and give it a try.